It was demanding to research,edit and produce or even voice over (although I know this particular aspect is not as I would like it to be due to my bad accent)!But it was well worth it for paying tribute to a genre that we love :) thank you for supporting the channel and I really hope you ll enjoy the video
@@willhuey4891 Yes I also mention that at the last part of the video. There is indeed a small rebirth of the genre as new titles are being developed but mainly by indie developers. There are ofc the Nancy Drew series, Deponia series, Timbleweed park and other but I truly hope that we will see the old classics in more modern platforms. I believe that this will help rekingle the flame for PNC adventures as they will be available to a larger audience
Wow, what an amazingly interesting and extensive historical review on adventure games. This and other content on your channel is A++ in quality! I lived my childhood in the 80s and youth in the 90s around these games so I really much enjoyed this video. For me the point & click adventure game genre is still number #1 even nowadays only very few of them can achieve commercial success. Yet I still celebrate the community of retro gamers among whom these games continue to relive. Kudos to you all for this! 💪😀👍
Thank you for sharing this awesome documentary. One of the games that I love and you forgot to mention was Robin Hood and the Conquest of Longbows by Sierra, what a master piece! Larry 1, Police Quest 3 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis are probably the Adventure games I played the most. Keep up the good work
Yup Robin Hood was a great game from the good old days of Sierra. There are some titles that didnt nake the final cut but I think about making an extra mini video with some honorable mentions. Robin Hood is definetely one of them, along with Ecoquest which was also a good sierra franchise, maybe iceman or even some of the good ctulhu mythos adventures like prisoners of ice! Thank you for your kind words and for supporting my channel
Very nicely-explained. I'd heard that sales for Mask of Eternity were somewhere in the 750k range, which would put it in the same overall range as its predecessors, and (setting aside how much it departed from the rest of the series, and what the fan reaction to that was,) I wonder if the problem there wasn't mainly to do with budgeting issues and being a little too ambitious too early. Yes; 3D graphics were new and "cool" back then, but as Daedelic demonstrated, they're not strictly necessary to make successful adventure games, even in the modern age. It doesn't seem like the actual number of adventure game fans has decreased since those times either, since modern adventure games sell about as many copies as the old ones did. It's just that it's a smaller market, by comparison to other genres, and therefore one where maintaining a modest budget is important for making a profit. At least, that's what I've been thinking about recently on this subject. If so, that would make adventure games better for independent developers anyway, just because they can be produced less expensively and are more likely to be noticed by graphic adventure fans when they are produced.
Thank you for your comment!You can also check my many adventure games franchise retrospective videos where I deep dive in every game of series like King’s Quest,Space quest,Quest For glory, Larry and more :) there are even more suggestions there
thank you for your comment! while researching this video there was a massive amount of titles that were left out not due to lower quality but because I had to make some compromises in order to keep the video in a reasonable size. I will definetely create a follow up video with more titles that were not included and Blade Runner will be in it for sure along with other iconic titles like Zord for instance
@@TholinGamer Understood, I was just surprised because in my mind Blade Runner is on the short list of premier adventure games of the 90s -- very innovative from narrative/technical perspectives, critically acclaimed and sold over a million copies. But then it's also my favorite film, so I'm probably a bit biased. ;) Looking forward to the followup, I understand these take a lot of work and I appreciate the effort. PS: Speaking of 1997 adventure titles with non-linear real-time worlds, The Last Express would be a good entry too!
Thank you for your feedback! It was a big task to research and produce this video as all the content in my channel but it is done with love and it was an amazing journey for me also to revisit games that marked as a gamer decades ago :)
There's been no fall. Adventure games still sell pretty well. It's just that the whole gaming market expanded way beyond what it used to be and now some games sell way more. Anyway, there's plenty of excellent point and click adventure games that came out in the last decade. Thimbleweed Park, The Witness, Kathy Rain, Syberia: The World Before, Gemini Rue, The Cat Lady, A Golden Wake, The Wardrobe, The Cat Lady, Unavowed, and all the stuff from Quantic Dream, like Detroid Become Human, just to mention a few off the top of my mind. Not to mention the various remasters. Recently they released an enhanced version of Another Code on Switch that implements a bunch of new Features. Oh, and what about the Shadowgate remake? Plenty thereof.
Great video! Have you played the Hero-U game that was created by the same people who made Quest for Glory? I feel that the adventure genre might have a little reawakening in the future on computer as well.
Interesting that Fate of Atlantis was a financial success but not MI2, I had no idea. I hear people mentioning Monkey Island all the time but I don't think I've ever met another person who's played FoA. I really liked the interaction with Sofia in that game, felt way less lonely than the standard adventure game.
I LOVE FoA. I believe its one of the best adventure games ever made with amazing story and characters. Regarding the financial success though, mosto of those games gained a cult following and increased fan base the years after their release. When they were initially released the critics and fans loved them but they were not financially successful becaue they had high production budgets (hand drawn art is expensive today and was even more expensive back then when they had to create the art on paper and digitize it later and recolor it digitally). That put a lot of those projects off budget
@@TholinGamer Hehe actually this video inspired me to watch an entire FoA playthrough, and I was shocked to see that it wasn't as good as I remembered it. Most of the game is played in mazes/corridors, and the puzzles doesn't seem to make any sense, like pushing Sofia (against her will) into a knife-thrower (with a record of failing) just so that you can get a free knife
I think the problem is that people who played MI1 didn't like MI2 as much because, you know, sequel is never as good as original. In my mind, at that time, MI1 was and still is, in a way, the best game ever. I am one of those people even tho I'm aware that MI2 is better game than MI1 :D The only sequel that managed to prove itself better is Terminator 2, that movie, I guess... That's why I liked Indy 4 more even tho I knew MI2 was better game, because there was no Indy 1 and 2 :D
Adventure games never really died, they just went underground and evolved to include new puzzle styles and interfaces. A lot of new and great adventure games are still being made. I’m not including so-called adventure games like heavy rain, fire watch, and other narrative interactive movie games.
Partially agree: graphic adventure games were never mainstream again after their downfall, but it would be really interesting to see a video about the history of adventure games during the 2000s and until nowadays. The problem would be that it would be harder to point out the most important titles of the era (save for ones like The Longest Journey or the Syberia franchise). Another important subject would be the rise of visual novels in the West and how they're nowadays as important, and I argue they're even more mainstream than western graphic adventures (while still being niche)
@@missingwestcoast Would you even consider visual novels to be “proper” adventure titles, or just another form of the narrative games I mentioned? Just your personal opinion.
@@TheMindIlluminated Some visual novels are closer to traditional adventure games: the Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban, or The Nonary Game franchises come to mind; as well as Famicom Mystery Club or Jake Hunter/Tantei Jinguuji Saburou franchises
Great video, thanks! Do you know the name of the point-and-click adventure game where you play as a protagonist in a long black coat, resembling Dracula? Or maybe you are Dracula, I can't remember exactly... I think the game came out in the 2000s.
When preparing this documentary I believed that mentioning Zork as one game that was inspired by colossal cave adventure would not be appropriate for such an iconic franchise in the adventure games genre.for that reason I am currently preparing a Zork dedicated documentary to cover all games of this amazing saga
thank you for your feedback! it is true as I was researching and preparing this video that a lot of games were left out. The Tex Murphy ones and Zork also was among them. keep an eye out in the channel though where you can find a lot of dedicated retrospectives as I will have the Tex Muprhy series soon :)
The Simon the sorcerer series is my favourite game series ever. But I hated 4 and 5 because they were not related to 1, 2 and 3D. Have you played Simon the sorcerer 3d? I'm on the list of Simon's biggest fans on the end credits of Simon the sorcerer 3D.
It is one of my favorite adventure games series!! The first two games were amazing but I believe that then, the next games did not live up to their predecessors. I really hope that adventure soft will manage to offer those games in modern platforms and maybe create a new. To be honest I am not a fan of 3d in adventure games! I would love to see simon again in a game with hand drawn graphics! Thank you for supporting my channel :)
First i strongly and totally disagree with your conclusion that Myst is to be blamed for the downfall of adventure genre. Secondly when you are speaking about low quality adventure games and you are showing ALL Myst games (RIVEN, EXILE,Myst 4, Myst 5, Uru Ages beyong Myst (later Mystonline) who actually almost all of them have a huge lore and are great! Thirdly you forgot Pandora Directive and Ripper..... For the failure of the companies to provide a successful Adventure game, the one to blame is the Companies and modern era where we have little time to think hard and play a good adventure....
Myst was one of the factors, since it spawned dozens of similar games which were called Myst clones. While the Myst original series wasn't bad by any means, it's imitators tried to do the same lore based narrative failing at it, and the obscurity of the puzzles (which was already a problem with classic third person Point-and-Click adventures) made them less accessible than other game genres at the time (particularly FPS). SInce FPS could do mostly the same as First Person Adventure games, but with an action gameplay, they would replace them in most audiences preferences (mostly because games were marketed towards teenager boys at the time). The other factor was in my opinion FMV games: most of them felt trashy even by it's time, and interaction was reduced due to their nature
Hi and thank you for your comments (pronnounciation can be a pain some times :P ) Alone in the Dark (especially the 1st game) was a magnificent experience when I first played it back in the 90s. Amazing graphics and great story. The reason I havent included it in this video is because as a series it evolved following a different route than adventure games, that of the survival horror. I am now finishin a new vid with the CTHULHU MYTHOS Adventure Games and guess what, it will not be absent there :)
Hahah why, WHY you Greeks can't pronounce sh as in sharp, ch as in child, j as in joker... I will never understand :D Still, great job, I am enjoying this.
You got me hooked for the whole 2 hours 👊🔥
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for putting all of this together!!
Holy shit this must have been a monumental research and production effort, will definetly watch it, thank you so much.
It was demanding to research,edit and produce or even voice over (although I know this particular aspect is not as I would like it to be due to my bad accent)!But it was well worth it for paying tribute to a genre that we love :) thank you for supporting the channel and I really hope you ll enjoy the video
@@TholinGamer point and click games have slowly made a comeback i mean there is also the long running nancy drew series too from her interactive.
@@willhuey4891 Yes I also mention that at the last part of the video. There is indeed a small rebirth of the genre as new titles are being developed but mainly by indie developers. There are ofc the Nancy Drew series, Deponia series, Timbleweed park and other but I truly hope that we will see the old classics in more modern platforms. I believe that this will help rekingle the flame for PNC adventures as they will be available to a larger audience
Wow, what an amazingly interesting and extensive historical review on adventure games. This and other content on your channel is A++ in quality! I lived my childhood in the 80s and youth in the 90s around these games so I really much enjoyed this video. For me the point & click adventure game genre is still number #1 even nowadays only very few of them can achieve commercial success. Yet I still celebrate the community of retro gamers among whom these games continue to relive. Kudos to you all for this! 💪😀👍
Wonderful video - you can really see the amount of work that went into this comprehensive history - thank you
Thank you for sharing this awesome documentary. One of the games that I love and you forgot to mention was Robin Hood and the Conquest of Longbows by Sierra, what a master piece! Larry 1, Police Quest 3 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis are probably the Adventure games I played the most. Keep up the good work
Yup Robin Hood was a great game from the good old days of Sierra. There are some titles that didnt nake the final cut but I think about making an extra mini video with some honorable mentions. Robin Hood is definetely one of them, along with Ecoquest which was also a good sierra franchise, maybe iceman or even some of the good ctulhu mythos adventures like prisoners of ice! Thank you for your kind words and for supporting my channel
Very nicely-explained. I'd heard that sales for Mask of Eternity were somewhere in the 750k range, which would put it in the same overall range as its predecessors, and (setting aside how much it departed from the rest of the series, and what the fan reaction to that was,) I wonder if the problem there wasn't mainly to do with budgeting issues and being a little too ambitious too early. Yes; 3D graphics were new and "cool" back then, but as Daedelic demonstrated, they're not strictly necessary to make successful adventure games, even in the modern age. It doesn't seem like the actual number of adventure game fans has decreased since those times either, since modern adventure games sell about as many copies as the old ones did. It's just that it's a smaller market, by comparison to other genres, and therefore one where maintaining a modest budget is important for making a profit. At least, that's what I've been thinking about recently on this subject.
If so, that would make adventure games better for independent developers anyway, just because they can be produced less expensively and are more likely to be noticed by graphic adventure fans when they are produced.
AWESOME VIDEO! Not only was it informative but you have given me a whole list of old games I want to go back and play. Great work!
Thank you for your comment!You can also check my many adventure games franchise retrospective videos where I deep dive in every game of series like King’s Quest,Space quest,Quest
For glory, Larry and more :) there are even more suggestions there
Wow this is a goldmine of information
Fantastic effort mate. Will have a good listen to this over the weekend
Thank you for supporting my content and channel!I hope you will enjoy the video :)
Thank you for this great video
Conspicuously absent is Blade Runner (1997), especially considering you mentioned Westwood Studios and its earlier adventure games.
thank you for your comment! while researching this video there was a massive amount of titles that were left out not due to lower quality but because I had to make some compromises in order to keep the video in a reasonable size. I will definetely create a follow up video with more titles that were not included and Blade Runner will be in it for sure along with other iconic titles like Zord for instance
@@TholinGamer Understood, I was just surprised because in my mind Blade Runner is on the short list of premier adventure games of the 90s -- very innovative from narrative/technical perspectives, critically acclaimed and sold over a million copies. But then it's also my favorite film, so I'm probably a bit biased. ;) Looking forward to the followup, I understand these take a lot of work and I appreciate the effort.
PS: Speaking of 1997 adventure titles with non-linear real-time worlds, The Last Express would be a good entry too!
Impressive stuff, cheers from Argentina!!
Thank you for putting your time and effort in this documentary. I really enjoyed it as it was een nice trip down memorylane.
Thank you for your feedback! It was a big task to research and produce this video as all the content in my channel but it is done with love and it was an amazing journey for me also to revisit games that marked as a gamer decades ago :)
There's been no fall. Adventure games still sell pretty well. It's just that the whole gaming market expanded way beyond what it used to be and now some games sell way more.
Anyway, there's plenty of excellent point and click adventure games that came out in the last decade.
Thimbleweed Park, The Witness, Kathy Rain, Syberia: The World Before, Gemini Rue, The Cat Lady, A Golden Wake, The Wardrobe, The Cat Lady, Unavowed, and all the stuff from Quantic Dream, like Detroid Become Human, just to mention a few off the top of my mind.
Not to mention the various remasters. Recently they released an enhanced version of Another Code on Switch that implements a bunch of new Features. Oh, and what about the Shadowgate remake?
Plenty thereof.
Very detailed and informative! Great job!
Awesome work bro, i enjoy watching every minute, and what a good memories, a lovely time machine.
Thank you for your kind words and for supporting my channel :)
Great video! Have you played the Hero-U game that was created by the same people who made Quest for Glory? I feel that the adventure genre might have a little reawakening in the future on computer as well.
Interesting that Fate of Atlantis was a financial success but not MI2, I had no idea. I hear people mentioning Monkey Island all the time but I don't think I've ever met another person who's played FoA. I really liked the interaction with Sofia in that game, felt way less lonely than the standard adventure game.
I LOVE FoA. I believe its one of the best adventure games ever made with amazing story and characters. Regarding the financial success though, mosto of those games gained a cult following and increased fan base the years after their release. When they were initially released the critics and fans loved them but they were not financially successful becaue they had high production budgets (hand drawn art is expensive today and was even more expensive back then when they had to create the art on paper and digitize it later and recolor it digitally). That put a lot of those projects off budget
@@TholinGamer Hehe actually this video inspired me to watch an entire FoA playthrough, and I was shocked to see that it wasn't as good as I remembered it. Most of the game is played in mazes/corridors, and the puzzles doesn't seem to make any sense, like pushing Sofia (against her will) into a knife-thrower (with a record of failing) just so that you can get a free knife
I think the problem is that people who played MI1 didn't like MI2 as much because, you know, sequel is never as good as original. In my mind, at that time, MI1 was and still is, in a way, the best game ever. I am one of those people even tho I'm aware that MI2 is better game than MI1 :D The only sequel that managed to prove itself better is Terminator 2, that movie, I guess... That's why I liked Indy 4 more even tho I knew MI2 was better game, because there was no Indy 1 and 2 :D
Πολύ καλή δουλειά! Θυμήθηκα πολλά πράγματα που τα είχα ξεχάσει! Bravo! Great job!
Adventure games never really died, they just went underground and evolved to include new puzzle styles and interfaces. A lot of new and great adventure games are still being made. I’m not including so-called adventure games like heavy rain, fire watch, and other narrative interactive movie games.
Partially agree: graphic adventure games were never mainstream again after their downfall, but it would be really interesting to see a video about the history of adventure games during the 2000s and until nowadays. The problem would be that it would be harder to point out the most important titles of the era (save for ones like The Longest Journey or the Syberia franchise).
Another important subject would be the rise of visual novels in the West and how they're nowadays as important, and I argue they're even more mainstream than western graphic adventures (while still being niche)
@@missingwestcoast Would you even consider visual novels to be “proper” adventure titles, or just another form of the narrative games I mentioned? Just your personal opinion.
@@TheMindIlluminated Some visual novels are closer to traditional adventure games: the Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban, or The Nonary Game franchises come to mind; as well as Famicom Mystery Club or Jake Hunter/Tantei Jinguuji Saburou franchises
You give some magnificent details, thank you very much for the effort!
Great video, thanks! Do you know the name of the point-and-click adventure game where you play as a protagonist in a long black coat, resembling Dracula? Or maybe you are Dracula, I can't remember exactly... I think the game came out in the 2000s.
Good stuff, very thorough!
Thank you for your comment!you can find more videos in my channel with retrospectives dedicated to iconic adventure game franchises
Any mention of the Zork graphical games, Spycraft, the cancelled Planetfall sequels etc?
When preparing this documentary I believed that mentioning Zork as one game that was inspired by colossal cave adventure would not be appropriate for such an iconic franchise in the adventure games genre.for that reason I am currently preparing a Zork dedicated documentary to cover all games of this amazing saga
Make sure to talk to Agustin Cordes about the aborted Planetfall 2 demo he found.
@@TholinGamer the entirety of infocom was skipped over in this.
Wasn't the original kings quest compatible only with Tandy 3 voice? Not adlib?
Great analysis of my beloved genre. I only missed the Tex Murphy series and Dark Seed.
thank you for your feedback! it is true as I was researching and preparing this video that a lot of games were left out. The Tex Murphy ones and Zork also was among them. keep an eye out in the channel though where you can find a lot of dedicated retrospectives as I will have the Tex Muprhy series soon :)
For me it was the Infocom text games that drew me into adventure games, how curious not to see them mentioned here
Nice video but you forgot the best P.I of this universe, Tex Murphy!
Thank you for your feedback!I plan to do an extra retrospective dedicated to the Tex Murphy series :) lovely games
@@TholinGamer Yeah that would be cool. Especially Pandora Directive was/is a masterpiece and the good news is that they work on a remaster.
The Simon the sorcerer series is my favourite game series ever. But I hated 4 and 5 because they were not related to 1, 2 and 3D. Have you played Simon the sorcerer 3d? I'm on the list of Simon's biggest fans on the end credits of Simon the sorcerer 3D.
It is one of my favorite adventure games series!! The first two games were amazing but I believe that then, the next games did not live up to their predecessors. I really hope that adventure soft will manage to offer those games in modern platforms and maybe create a new. To be honest I am not a fan of 3d in adventure games! I would love to see simon again in a game with hand drawn graphics! Thank you for supporting my channel :)
What about newet titles like Wolf is among us?
Did I miss seeing The Hobbit by Melbourne House?
First i strongly and totally disagree with your conclusion that Myst is to be blamed for the downfall of adventure genre. Secondly when you are speaking about low quality adventure games and you are showing ALL Myst games (RIVEN, EXILE,Myst 4, Myst 5, Uru Ages beyong Myst (later Mystonline) who actually almost all of them have a huge lore and are great! Thirdly you forgot Pandora Directive and Ripper..... For the failure of the companies to provide a successful Adventure game, the one to blame is the Companies and modern era where we have little time to think hard and play a good adventure....
Myst was one of the factors, since it spawned dozens of similar games which were called Myst clones. While the Myst original series wasn't bad by any means, it's imitators tried to do the same lore based narrative failing at it, and the obscurity of the puzzles (which was already a problem with classic third person Point-and-Click adventures) made them less accessible than other game genres at the time (particularly FPS). SInce FPS could do mostly the same as First Person Adventure games, but with an action gameplay, they would replace them in most audiences preferences (mostly because games were marketed towards teenager boys at the time). The other factor was in my opinion FMV games: most of them felt trashy even by it's time, and interaction was reduced due to their nature
Nooooooooo, there will never be fall for them...!!!
complet shot in the dark does anyone remember a game with a teeneger run from a guy with a hook for a hand in a maze
@@unrest_pegasus Labyrinth?
@@TholinGamer it was cartoonie qte type of game and I remember if you take a wrong turn you get eaten by a frog and it was a lot of trail and error
No Alone in the Dark...
And Ecstatica
Hi and thank you for your comments (pronnounciation can be a pain some times :P ) Alone in the Dark (especially the 1st game) was a magnificent experience when I first played it back in the 90s. Amazing graphics and great story. The reason I havent included it in this video is because as a series it evolved following a different route than adventure games, that of the survival horror. I am now finishin a new vid with the CTHULHU MYTHOS Adventure Games and guess what, it will not be absent there :)
@@TholinGamer So, H. P. Lovecraft theme is next. Can't wait to see how you will manage that! Take your time, you are on the right track here
φιλαρακι, ελληνας ετσι?
Κανει μπαμ :)
Hahah why, WHY you Greeks can't pronounce sh as in sharp, ch as in child, j as in joker... I will never understand :D
Still, great job, I am enjoying this.
5 ad breaks in 13 minutes that's just ridiculous I wont watch the rest of your video or any more of your videos